Monday, February 10, 2020

The other day I was reading an article in a fly-fishing
magazine that was proclaiming how much easier it was to get started in the
sport today than it was in the past. The argument as stated could be paraphrased
as: ‘Today we have better and more availability of gear choices, and
information is easier to come by.’

I found myself laughing a bit at this, for truth be told, a
case can be made that it is both easier and yet more difficult to begin in this
fine sport due to exactly the same reasons stated. Follow me as I explore this
a bit…

Stuff:

Back when I took up the sport there were admittedly less
gear choices available…. a lot less choices. In some ways, this worked in our
favor, since we had fewer decisions to make, and spent more time fishing. I
asked a number of the finest anglers I know about their path into the sport,
and the answers all shared common themes. We went to a fly-shop to purchase a
setup, were gifted basic equipment, or assembled the necessary gear ad-hoc
after much research. Since we were beginners, and there were fewer choices
available, we were less confused about our gear. We simply had what we had. One
of us had a double taper line and a Shakespeare Wonder Rod, another of us had a
new graphite rod and a weight-forward line and we all thought he was the king
of the river. Then we went fishing.

My initial setup was an eight-weight rod that I purchased as
a blank and hand-built into a finished rod. I still have it. That rod served me
for steelhead and bass in my local river for three years before I purchased a
five-weight for smaller quarry. For those initial three years, it was my only
rod. A lack of financial means when on one’s own after college did lead to a
rather necessary frugal approach, but I never felt lacking. Instead, I went
fishing… sometimes up to five times a week. The other stories were the same.
One friend had his mother sew pockets onto his old hunting vest, turning it
into a fishing vest. Another friend used an old candy tin as his first fly-box,
and still has it somewhere.

Not to seem like one of those dour “Back in my day” types,
but the reality of it was that the choices we had were easier to make because
the market was smaller, and more simplified.

For example:

To carry our gear into the river we had a choice between an
assortment of vests or possibly a canvas stream bag. Today we have chest packs,
myriad sling packs, fanny packs, hip packs, backpacks, packs that transform and
convert, packs that attach to other packs to form modular ‘Tactical gear
storage solutions,’ and everything in between. I saw an angler recently on our
local spring creeks who was so top-heavy and over-loaded with packs and storage
solutions that he was having trouble walking on the bank. The variety of
choices is an improvement, but not if it hampers our actual fishing.

For fly rods back in the day, we had several large
manufacturers out there like Orvis, Fenwick, Garcia, and the first Sage rods as
well. Here we had what we thought were a myriad amount of choices; more than
enough for our needs depending on our budget. They were easy to understand as
well. Marketing was less sophisticated, and seemingly tried to simplify the
process of selection instead of confuse us. Today we have dozens of major
manufacturers marketing rods with odd but trendy names. Some rod companies
claim they make and sell over 150 different rods, each for some ethereal but
very narrow purpose. Given their similarity to each other, the beginner can
hardly tell the difference. Add in online companies not represented in
reputable fly-shops who mass-market rods made in China at cut-rate prices, and
it becomes apparent that any on-line forum with a classified section has a
massive amount of gear for sale with the description “Cast twice,” or “Fished
once.”

Confusion leads to an unending cycle of buying and selling
in the quest for an illusory magic bean. Less time is spent fishing, and more
time spent on gear acquisitions and unending debate and questions. Arguing with
fellow anglers about which sling-pack is cooler or better may have replaced the
time we used to spend absorbing the lore of the sport through literature or by
getting our proverbial feet wet.

The ultimate complication and confusion poster-child may be
fly-line.

In the past we did have choices between a number of brands
and categories: double-taper, weight-forward, floating, full-sinking, sink tip
and specialty lines such as saltwater, bass, and shooting heads. That would
make up around 90% of lines available at the time. A new line needed to
purchased when the old one wore out, or when a new type of fish or fishing
necessitated a different line. The labels were rather easy to read and
differentiate as well. For example, Cortland had a package labeled ‘444 Fly-Rod
Line: WF Floating.’ It doesn’t get much simpler that that. Garcia had their
Kingfisher line, and Orvis sold their own ‘Flyline.’ What was lacking then
versus today is the hyped-up marketing which has turned the entire fly-line
industry into a specialized marketing engine designed to get one to not only
purchase the ‘New’ thing because it is better than the ‘Old’ thing from the
same manufacturer that you bought last year and fished with once, but to get
the average angler to have a fly line for every river, day of the week, or
lunar cycle. No wonder new and even experienced anglers are confused.

A quick browse through catalogues and websites shows us both
the diversity and the confusing over-abundance of lines marketed today.

Here are just a few random examples:

‘Hi-Performance Fly-line’ (vs. what… like Low performance
fly-line?)

‘Pro’ fly-line (Apparently for professionals… not amateurs,
which explains its $98 price.)

‘Frequency’ fly-line (Does it vibrate differently by
weight?)

‘In-Touch’ (vs. what… out-of touch?)

‘Nymph Taper’ (Because we need a different fly-line every
time we switch from a dry-fly to a nymph, even though thousands of us have been
using a standard taper WF floating line for both applications for years…)

‘Euro Nymph’ (Take your choice: either a line allowing
competition angling with multiple nymph rigs, or a ‘Sprockets’ like line that
comes with electronic techno-pop music and allows the user to wear skinny black
turtleneck shirts while fishing…)

‘MaxCatch’ (Now I understand why I never catch my limit
every day… I guess I was using a MinCatch line all these years…)

‘Fairplay’ (I just want to find an ‘Unfair Play’ line… That
sounds so much better to me…)

‘Clearwater’ (Apparently only to be used when no rain or
runoff starts to dirty the water…)

‘Precise Finesse’ (A must-buy for those of us currently
using an ‘Imprecise Clod-Hopper’ line…)

‘Creek’ fly-line (What about a river… or a brook… If we call
it a ‘Crik’ do we need a different line or a jar of moonshine?)

‘World Class’ ( Perhaps not the best for anglers traveling
to 3rd world nations for fishing adventure…)

‘Cheeky’ line (Reminds me of a quip I uttered at an
attractive blonde back in college that earned me a kick in the shins…)

‘Technical Trout’ (Apparently all this time I have been
fishing to ‘Non-technical’ trout…explains a lot.)

‘Amplitude’ (Must be similar to ‘Frequency’, but this one
vibrates at the maximum frequency… wonder if it can be programmed to play
distortion guitar?)

The reader gets the point… so enough already.

All humor aside, tapers do matter in a fly-line, and one
does need different lines for different applications, but this has gotten
downright silly.

Worst of all are shooting heads, especially those designed
for Skagit-style casting and involving separate heads and running lines. When
this started out, we had a choice of two or three brands of heads and running
lines to match together. Within several years of the industry seeing the
benefit of floating and sinking heads and running-lines sold separately,
everything exploded. The most common question on online forums (see next
section on information) was “Which running line should I pair with a given
head?”

I know anglers today that actually carry with them on the
river something like twenty different head and running line combinations. They
must spend the entire fishing day farting around with their lines…

So what do I have against innovation and choices? Nothing. I
just miss the clarity and simplicity that fly-fishing is supposed to be.

It also insults my intelligence… Since I spent fifteen years
inside the industry at independent fly-shops as well as corporate giants, I can
tell you a little secret… Ready for it?

The confusion is deliberate.

Marketing performs its job when it makes us want things, or
desire to replace things we already own with a ‘newer’ or ‘better’ model. It
does this by appealing to both our baser instincts, as well as to our desire to
‘Keep up to date.’ ‘New’ equals good, and anything you have that is old (ie:
not current) is bad, or outdated… and how many of us want to be accused of
being outdated?

However, this only goes so far. By saturation-bombing our
different choices and making things unduly complicated, (you need a specialty
rod to fish for Small-mouth Bass, not the standard 9 foot 6,7, or 8 wt., or if
you are casting streamers from a boat then you need a rod specific to the
purpose with a proprietary fly line to match and a separate running line and
special nano-friction backing,) the industry maximizes its dollars per angler,
and in a limited market, that is a desirable outcome for the corporations.
Never-mind that one in five anglers will give up fly-fishing because it finally
seems to get so complicated, an outcome the article cited at the outset claimed
was the opposite.

In some ways, it benefits some of us older and wiser coots.
We no longer need to pay full-price anymore or buy anything new since the
biggest market for fly tackle in all of history sits before us in the guise of
things purchased and now for sale second-hand with little use at all…

I just feel sorry for many of the new anglers that never had
the chance to see what the world of fly-fishing was like when we had a chance
to go to the river without so much confusing stuff.

Information overload:

The second part of the claim is that there is more
information available today. That is something that I don’t think any angler
would argue with.

However, it is the source, and medium of the information
that can cause problems and resulting chaos and confusion.

Many of us took up the sport in the P.I. epoch…
(Pre-Internet)

Because we actually read books and magazine articles that
were written by experts and professionals, we were steered in straighter
pathways than today. Read a copy of Bergman’s Trout, Schwiebert, Atherton, or
other authors that explained the nuances and broke down the mysteries and
necromancy of fishing with a fly in chapters rich with information and expert
advice, and one was primed with knowledge before questions arose.

Then the internet came along, and to our happy surprise, we
discovered like-minded anglers of all experience levels sharing information on
various websites and online forums. The world opened and good solid information
flowed back and forth over the modems of the pescadors. Bytes were exchanged
for more bites. I was there as one of the first users of the new technology and
access to the libraries of wisdom out there…

Everything changed within ten years. I stopped even
accessing the forums I used to avidly participate in because as time passed,
and new anglers came online, the same questions badly framed and poorly asked
again and again overwhelmed and eclipsed the solid information shared and
traded.

“What’s the best five weight rod?”

“What grain head should I use when the water flow increases
by 3 feet per second and my fly-rod is green in color?”

“Which sling-pack is the coolest?”

It was a sign of the times… Then came social media, and the
whole world of information overload and confusion reached critical-mass and
detonated leaving mere fragments of typing left to fall like a fog over the
unread books.

I joined a few social media forums in the past year to see
how the questions were asked and answered: it caused laughter and cynicism in
the same moment.

Many of the answers were contradictory or self-serving. Even
thoughtful responses to questions or inquiries only lasted a day or so, and
then someone asked the same question again, getting a different answer.

Then the inherent problem occurred to me.

Not only were the internet and social media venues not
durable as far as a source of information such as a book, it was that by
attempting to crowd-source the answers that the questioner ran afoul.

The person answering the query could be a knowledgeable
angler with vast experiences, an open mind, and with good critical-thinking
skills… or it could be some dude who caught a fish and now thinks he is a
guide. The answers could come from independent sources unbiased as to brand, or
from somebody with a brand entanglement such as the ubiquitous ‘Brand
Ambassadors,’ or ‘Pro-Staff.’ Believe it or not, some companies actually pay
people to provide gear advice on social media forums. It goes without saying
that the answers are not unbiased, and the employing company’s brand is
recommended each and every time. The worst thing is that the beginner, without
a foundation of knowledge, can’t tell a good answer from a bad, inaccurate, or
misleading one.

Do an experiment. Join a social media forum on fly-fishing
and ask a ‘newby’ type question. Save the good, the bad, and the ugly answers
you get. Now wait a week and ask the same question again, perhaps in a
different way. Note the answers, and compare them with one another.

I bet my oldest and stinkiest fishing hat that you will
shake your head.

That is what new anglers are facing if they don’t get their
gear from a reliable flyshop after asking appropriate questions and doing a bit
of homework, and staying away from the noise of confusion. If not, they might
become one of the competitors in a fly-fishing team competition recently held.
Two of the anglers spent twenty minutes arguing about whose fly-rod was better.
Then one broke his rod while the other one dropped his tactical modular gear
storage system into the river.

My advice to the thousands of anglers I have taught to cast
and fish a fly has always been this:

Simplicity.

“Go to a flyshop. Get a matching rod, line and reel, a few
leaders and a box of flies and go fishing for God’s sake. Put in your time.
Stay off the internet and don’t look at any ads. Less information in the
short-term will benefit you in the long run. Learn to walk first in your diaper
stage before you get all tangled up in the underwear of too much confusion and
stuff, and end up placing your new outfit into the closet along with all the
other abandoned dreams…”

The Classical Angler

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"If angling is the contemplative sport, as Mr. Walton would have us understand, that contemplation should not be on the final destination, but upon the path that led us there. Let that path not be the easy one nor the commonplace, but one of inner discovery and learning, for that much the better when the fish is finally brought to hand." Erik Helm

"“If the world were clear, art would not exist.” Albert Camus

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A quiet rest stop for we anglers who enjoy tradition and literary effort, and a site that intends to inspire, question, and spur thinking.

There is power in words, and art in the angling which we need to appreciate. as we journey through the riffles of life, never forget the art and the approach are as important as the fish brought to hand.If you like this blog, please tell others about it and link to it.

Comment from the archives: This is the greatest writing on fly-fishing I have ever read since the stories of Traver and MacQuarrie. Your use of analogies and the romance and reference to art are one of a kind. Keep writing and keep this art alive please!